Arriving in the Philippines on a Fulbright scholarship, Bartholomew embarks on a singular quest to learn about the Philippines' obsessive love for basketball and what he finds is that this obsessive love has embedded itself in almost all of the country's elements.
Play by Play
The book displays Bartholomew's skill as a sports writer, as he recounts both the Alaska Aces' road to the Philippine Basketball Association's import-reinforced conference, and his own tour of duty as a ringer/import for a Boracay-based commercial team. In both counts, he succeeds in getting the reader to heavily root for them by laying the proper groundwork. He generously recounts his time hanging out with the Aces and its players, their insecurities, their struggles and their personal thoughts and dreams, leaving the reader no chance to not be invested. Meanwhile, his tongue-in-cheek recap of his own travails in the heavily partial officiating of the Boracay commercial league is whether by design or not, the perfect microcosm of the proverbial Filipino hard luck story so prevalent in the country's long-running telenovelas. By the time he recounts the respective big games of both teams, the narrative becomes a written version of Marv Albert's iconic play-by-play, leaving the reader breathless with anticipation during the recap and hopelessly spent by its end.
